Owens v. International Paper Co.
| Decision Date | 15 March 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 74--3646,74--3646 |
| Citation | 528 F.2d 606 |
| Parties | Elvenier OWENS, mother, et al., etc., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. INTERNATIONAL PAPER COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Boyce Holleman, Jim W. Rose, Gulfport, Miss., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Rae Bryant, Gulfport, Miss., for defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
Before GEWIN, COLEMAN and GEE, Circuit Judges.
This wrongful death action under Mississippi law was brought by the statutory heirs and beneficiaries of young Ronald Owens, who was killed when the automobile he was driving struck a flatcar standing on a spur track where it crossed Oil Highway 49, near Wiggins, Mississippi. 1 The trial judge granted an instructed verdict against plaintiffs at the close of their evidence on their theories that negligent location, construction and maintenance of the track proximately caused the accident. On appeal, plaintiff argues that: (1) the evidence presented was sufficient to establish a prima facie case of negligence on the part of the defendant in its operation of the spur track; (2) Miss. Code Ann. § 77--9--249 (1972) requires this case to be submitted to the jury to determine negligence and contributory negligence; (3) Miss. Code Ann. § 65--7--7 (1972) requires the defendant to prove its authority to construct the spur track across a public roadway; and (4) a prima facie case was presented that the defendant was negligent in failing to correct a dangerous situation of which it had notice.
On the evening of May 26, 1971, Owens, a recent graduate of high school, was test driving a Volkswagen with a view to purchasing it. The car was in good mechanical condition and the lights worked properly. Owens, who was very familiar with the road, was proceeding south on the asphalt highway in clear weather when he hit a black flatcar at approximately 9:00 p.m. and was apparently killed instantly. No witnesses to the accident were present, but photographs of the Volkswagen in evidence make clear that he struck with great force. There is no indication of any attempt on his part to slow his automobile before the collision and no evidence of any skid marks.
A warning sign was properly posted some 500 feet before the crossing. A sign reading 'Mississippi Law Stop' was about 44 feet from the track, six feet closer to it than state law specifies. Topographical data presented by plaintiffs' highway engineer showed that the track lay at the bottom of a quarter-mile long, twenty-foot decline in the highway. For the last five-hundred feet to the crossing, however, the road became practically level, dropping only about two feet. The spur track, constructed by defendant International, led from the main railroad line to its plant across the heavily-traveled, state-aid rural road. Trees stood on both sides of the road at the crossing, which was not marked by lights or flares. International was responsible for maintenance of the track and posting any necessary warnings at the crossing.
The sheriff and a local resident testified that, when traveling down the hill, their lights did not strike the track until they were within fifty to one-hundred twenty feet of the crossing and that stopping in time to avoid a collision would be difficult when moving at the speed limit of fifty m.p.h. They stated, however, that a train on the tracks was visible at night if it were moving or if the car obstructing the road were a boxcar, but that flatcars such as the one involved here were very hard to see. They did admit that such a car might be made out if one were especially careful.
On the night in question, a railroad crew left the cur of cars across the roadway while engaged in switching them. The flatcar had no bulkheads, and its end and wheel carriage apparently obstructed the southbound right lane of the highway. A fatal accident had occurred at the same crossing fifty-six days earlier when a car approaching from the other direction hit a train.
Plaintiffs' principal and strongest point of error asserts that their showing of defendant's negligence was sufficient strong to make a case for the jury, so that the instructed verdict was error. What they needed to prove to make a jury case is, of course, to be measured by Mississippi substantive law. Whether they proved such a case is a matter of federal procedural law, as we shall note later. We turn first to the Mississippi law governing railroad crossing collisions.
Over forty-five years ago the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in its Holifield opinion cited infra, laid down the principles which govern this case. As phrased in Illinois Central RR v. Williams, 242 Miss. 586, 595, 135 So.2d 831, 834 (1961), the most recent authority cited to us on the subject by either side, the governing state substantive rule is
the so-called occupied crossing doctrine, and the peculiar or dangerous environment exception to it. A railroad has the right to occupy a crossing for its legitimate purposes, and, while so occupying it, the carrier is not required to maintain lights on its cars or to station a man with a lantern at the crossing to give warning that it is obstructed structed by cars, unless the conditions and circumstances are such that the employees of the railroad know, or in the exercise of reasonable care and caution should have known, that a person driving upon the highway at a reasonable rate of speed in an automobile properly equipped with lights, and carefully operated, could not see, or might not be able to see, the cars in time to avoid a collision with them. Gulf M. & N.R.R. Company v. Holifield, 152 Miss. 674, 120 So. 750 (1929). To fall within the exception stated in Holifield, there must be 'some peculiar environment which renders the crossing unusually dangerous.'
Since the other elements of proof are not contested, whether or not plaintiffs prevail on this point comes down to whether they established by sufficient proof 'a peculiar environment' at the crossing that night which rendered it unusually dangerous. Examples of conditions which qualify as creating a peculiar environment and satisfying the Mississippi rule are proof that the crossing in question was obstructed by a flatcar, 2 was preceded by a dip in the highway masking it from the headlights of the approaching car, and the customary warning sign was entirely absent 3 or proof that the crossing was 16.5 feet above the highway at a distance of 350 feet, so that less than 100 yards from the crossing a headlight beam would not only miss a standing railroad car on the crossing but the crossing itself, and that it had an acute angle of intersection, confusing lights in the vicinity, partial obstruction of vision by buildings, etc. 4 And the Mississippi Supreme Court was at least willing to assume arguendo, in Russell v. Mississippi Central RR, 239 Miss. 741, 748, 125 So.2d 283, 285 (1960), that a steep descent to the track might of itself constitute such an environment of unusual danger:
We will assume for the purpose of this opinion that if the evidence for appellants would have justified a finding that there was a steep hill descending from the east to a point near the crossing where the road became flat, or nearly flat, so that lights of a vehicle approaching the crossing from the east would not reveal the presence of the box car until the vehicle was within 30 to 100 feet of the crossing, then appellants would have brought their case within the exception to the rule, as stated above. If the oral testimony of the witnesses was all that was before the court it may be that appellants would have made out a case that would withstand a motion for a directed verdict. But even under the rule that the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to appellants, as already stated, appellants' proof did not make a case for the jury for the reason that...
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